As tributes pile up for Sen. John McCain, Purdue President Mitch Daniels talks about traits in short supply in a country divided

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – It started as a conversation about a distant past, about the times Mitch Daniels crossed paths with John McCain, first when Purdue University’s president was part of Sen. Dick Lugar’s staff and the late senator from Arizona was a Navy liaison to the U.S. Senate.

The stories of tribute took a few turns through Lugar’s office – days when Daniels finally realized Capt. McCain was that John McCain, the admiral’s son captured as a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam – tense budget moments at the White House under George W. Bush and a senator’s encouraging call at a time when the then Indiana governor was seriously weighing a presidential bid in 2011.

It quickly became a conversation about most recent days, and most recent words, most notably ones Daniels used to send the 2018 graduating class out from Purdue in May and McCain issued to say farewell to the nation in his closing days before his death Saturday, a few days shy of his 82nd birthday.

The addresses were so close in feel and tone – even the language about tribalism and the things that should bind, rather than separate a nation today – that they might have been cribbed from each other.

“I see what you’re saying,” Daniels said. “I will say, we’re not the only two. It’s a growing body of concern. … But it was very McCain-like, I think, to speak out about it. Because he was always willing to rise above. It used to be just party-driven partisan politics. Now, it’s taken on this new, in some ways more troublesome, tribal dimension.

“When you think about his values and the life he led, it’s not surprising he would be speaking in that way when he surveys the current scene.”

Compare notes.

In May, Daniels spent a commencement speech outlining a new self-segregation that had taken hold and continued to feed a distrust in institutions – whether government, business, media or higher education. He spoke about how “life in a tribe is easy, in all the wrong ways. … Whatever the tribe thinks is right, whatever the other side thinks is wrong. There’s no responsibility; just follow what the tribe, and whoever speaks for it, says to do.”

His call: “It’s no longer just a matter of Americans not knowing and understanding each other. We’ve seen these clusters deepen, and harden, until separation has led to anger, misunderstanding turned into hostility. At the individual level, it’s a formula for bitterness and negativity. For a self-governing people, it’s poison. The grandest challenge for your leadership years may well be to reverse and surmount this threat.”

“‘Fellow Americans’ – that association has meant more to me than any other,” he wrote.

"We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.”

"We are 325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.”

Beyond suggestions of tribalism’s ills, Daniels talked about McCain in the same light he did George H.W. Bush in a piece the Washington Post commissioned earlier this year, with the former president’s health in question. In that piece, published in June on Bush 41’s 94th birthday, concluded:

“Virtually every quality the first President Bush personifies has faded from our national life,” Daniels wrote in the Post. “He was astonishingly forgiving of those who wronged or defeated him. Today, it’s more common for leaders to practice the rugby coach’s instruction to ‘get your retaliation in first.’”

This week, Daniels said, “I could have said many of the same things about John. He risked his life for the country. We could easily have lost him at various places along the line. He took on one assignment after another. He was a tenacious debater and advocate, but he was very forgiving and made friends he disagreed with.”

Daniels tells a story about being budget director for Bush 43 in 2002 and flagging a Senate Appropriations Committee provision that would have allowed the U.S. Air Force to lease 100 Boeing 767 commercial aircraft and convert them into tankers.

“The pressure was unbelievable,” Daniels said. “When I wasn’t getting calls from the speaker of the House, chairman of the Armed Services Committee and what felt like half the Congress, they were calling the president, who’s calling me. He didn’t know all the intricacies of this. He’s asking, ‘Isn’t there some way to make this work out?’”

McCain, he said, was one of the few who came to his rescue on a deal that Daniels figured would cost taxpayers $26 billion for aircraft the Air Force hadn’t even asked for in a situation that eventually landed two people tied to Boeing in jail.

“John knew it didn’t look right, it didn’t smell right and, truthfully, it wasn’t right,” Daniels said. “Here’s a defense hawk – one of the biggest – and a subject he cared a lot about, but only to do it the right way.”

“A lot of us feel, on both sides, this incredible ad hominem, and if you’re wrong, you’re evil. The left is as bad as the right – they’re mirror images,” Daniels said. “The fact that John McCain was speaking about this in his later days just underlines how important it really is. This is not a small-caliber concern.

"Just points out that what John McCain embodied is in short supply right now.”

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.